x men: apocalypse

A raft of thespians really made the effort to become unrecognisable for roles in 2016, whether through over-eating (McConaughey), heavy prosthetics (Downton’s Dan Stevens for ‘Beauty and the Beast’) or simply just bad eyebrows (John Travolta in ‘The People Vs O.J. Simpson). Here are a few more of the best. Image credits: Reuters/Disney/Lionsgate/BBC/Associated Press/Cover Media/Warner/Universal/Deadline/Fox/Sony/Focus Features/FameFly/Instagram/AFP/FX/US Weekly/WENN/GC Images

Kenneth Lonergan’s new drama, Manchester by the Sea, is an emotionally devastating and powerful film about family, loss, and forgiveness. Imagine then how the subject matter affected the cast, which spent weeks filming Manchester. “It was painful,” Casey Affleck told Yahoo Movies (watch above).

20th Century Fox are in a bind with the ‘X-Men’ franchise following the underwhelming performance of Apocalypse earlier this summer. Because while it has been reported by The Hollywood Reporter that a reboot of the franchise is currently “in the works” at the studio, the publication also revealed that, according to their sources, this could end up being just a reconfiguration. There’s just one problem. ‘Apocalypse’ was the last film of the actors’ three-picture deals with the studio on ‘X-Men’, meaning that if they were to return they’d be after a huge pay increase.

Depending on your point of view, 2016′s summer of blockbusters can be described as a number of things, with titles like ‘X-Men: Apocalypse’, ‘Captain America: Civil War’, ‘Jason Bourne’, ‘Star Trek Beyond’, ‘Suicide Squad’, ‘The BFG’, ‘Ghostbusters’, and ‘Finding Dory’ pleasing movie goers to varying degrees as well as being divisive with critics. Over at comScore, the numbers have been tallied and, according to The Wrap, 108 days after the first Friday in May 2016 summer films are ahead of 2015′s but only narrowly. Annual box office takings are up nearly 5%, which is largely down to a few big-hitters from the likes of Disney and Marvel, not to mention some consistent numbers from Warner Bros. too.